Crazy Woman Fear

The other night I heard a very funny line on the TV show Scrubs that struck home with me.

Dr. Elliot Reid (played by Sarah Chalke) has a new boyfriend and she is afraid she will lose him if she opens up emotionally.

"I can't hide the crazy anymore," she tells her friend, nurse Carla.

I thought I would bust a gut laughing. The line was so hilarious to me because it had a definite ring of truth to it.

It came as no surprise when I noticed that a man had written the episode of Scrubs. The funny line was imbued with a certain male fear, often confused with generalized fear of commitment.

Men are afraid of getting stuck with a crazy woman. Of course both sexes put on their best faces when they begin a relationship, but men are terrified that some type of clinical insanity is hidden behind the woman's mask.

I realize that sounds sexist, but many of us men can't help thinking this way because we grew up with crazy mothers who drove our poor fathers to distraction. As adult men, we don't want the same thing happening to us.

I have had more than one scary experience with new relationships. A few examples:

Leslie was gorgeous and seemed quite normal when I met her. A few weeks after we became "intimate," she asked to move in with me. It all happened so fast I felt somewhat reluctant, but I decided to take the gamble.

Strange things began to happen after her mask came off. One night while she was working on a jigsaw puzzle she suffered an attack of the shakes. She didn't drink or use drugs, so I knew it wasn't the DTs. When I tried to comfort her and asked her to explain what was wrong, she exploded in my face, knocking the jigsaw puzzle on the floor and telling me to leave her alone.

Uh-oh, I thought, crazy woman. Run away before it's too late.

Another night I came home late to find Leslie naked in our bedroom, which she had lighted with dozens of burning candles. I felt a strange combination of arousal and the old male fear. Scanning the room for pentagram symbols, I wondered if I had a Satan worshipper living in my house. Would the next step be bloody sacrifices to the Dark Prince?

Leslie was great in bed, but she couldn't stand to be touched outside of the sex act. Which I thought was very strange indeed.

When we were breaking up later on, Leslie confessed that she lived for the initial rush of new relationships, but quickly got bored. I waited two months for her to find another place to live before I was forced to move her things out of my house while she was gone one day. It was a narrow escape from getting stuck with a crazy woman.

I knew Audrey as a friend for years before we got intimate one drunken night. At precisely the wrong moment she became hysterical, shouting obscenities at me. Maybe her bizarre reaction was due to the booze, but I decided that we should return to being just friends after the crazy woman alarm went off in my head.

Valeria was a married woman I got involved with in the Air Force. Her husband was in Thailand and a part of me felt like a dog for taking advantage of her loneliness. But I was lonely, too, and she made me happy.

When my guilty conscience finally got the better of me and I moved out of her mobile home, I worried about her being alone once again. I shouldn't have worried. In the next few months she took up with practically every guy who lived in my barracks. I was shocked to see a 20-year-old woman I considered a bit innocent behaving like a nymphomaniac. Her mask had burst open and I realized if I hadn't gotten cozy with her and moved into her trailer, it would have been just about any other guy for certain.

After awhile, I developed a fine-tuned radar for crazy woman symptoms. I learned to look for the tiniest slips revealing peculiar traits behind the mask of normality. Needless to say, this second sight led to fewer girlfriends, but I felt it was the best strategy to safeguard my own sanity. Craziness is contagious, especially in relationships.

I don't think women are afraid of getting stuck with crazy men. If they are attractive at all, they know they can find a normal man without looking too far.

Am I right? I'd like to hear some female opinions on this.

__________________
"The earth was made round so we can't see too far down the road and know what is coming." -- Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

Leslie sounds like she had a combination of Lyme disease and some kind of abuse.

Valeria sounds like she was abused also.

What is about such severely damaged women that makes you feel safe getting involved with them? Not that they don't deserve love and respect, too, but you must not be setting appropriate limits on where you are going with these relationships, IMHO.

Kit

__________________If I did not tell you all the changes you might consider, I would be doing you a disservice, treating you with less than the full respect you deserve. This much I have learned from my years teaching and mentoring writers.

I read some of the legal material on names and my understanding is that if someone who reads your work can put 2 + 2 together and identify who your writing is really about, then you can be sued. This is why I use a pseudonym if my fiction is close to real life. And, if it is non-fiction but uncomplimentary regarding a specific living being, then I also use my pseudonym. Of course, I also believe we should do no harm with our writing (unless it is to the current political party and it's bizarre headman!)

As to beauty - it's in the eyes and the smile in my book, and it's possible to choose to find everything else beautiful when someone is worthy of affection.

I don't think it's so different - but to tell you those stories I'd have to become my pseudonym alter ego and she's upstairs catching some zzz's.

Kit

__________________If I did not tell you all the changes you might consider, I would be doing you a disservice, treating you with less than the full respect you deserve. This much I have learned from my years teaching and mentoring writers.

Starrwriter, I've been on both sides of crazy. I had a boyfriend who I cared very much for, but I was young so I cheated on him. I promptly lost him. Then he started dating someone else. Well, I couldn't take it. Something in me snapped, bigtime. It all ended with my chasing him and his new girlfriend through a cornfield behind the wheel of my Camaro (It was the 80s, give me a break. I was probably listening to Whitesnake, too.) . Anyway, why did I do such a thing? I was young, stupid and in a great deal of emotional pain. Would I behave that way now? I certainly like to think I wouldn't.

I also had a very jealous exboyfriend call me repeatedly, play songs about how if he couldn't have me, no one could and then hang up. I found all of the teddy bears I had given him, one by one, decapitated and shoved in my mailbox. He showed up at places I would be with other dates. He followed my friends to find out where I was. Classic stalker behavior.

Why do people act like that? I don't know, I think riverstone's reasoning makes a lot of sense. I also think if you add alcohol to already poor judgment skills, of course you're going to have a Jerry Springer moment.

All I'm saying is, women aren't the only kind of crazy out there. Most of your stalkers are men.

PiperD - did your really do that? You have got such a book in you!
Kit

__________________If I did not tell you all the changes you might consider, I would be doing you a disservice, treating you with less than the full respect you deserve. This much I have learned from my years teaching and mentoring writers.

Here's the words to the song that my ex played on the phone to me, every night for months. Sweet, huh?

All I Need by Motley Crue (Told ya it was the '80s)
[FONT='Times New Roman', serif]The blade of my knife
Faced away from your heart
Those last few nights
It turned and sliced you apart
This love that I tell
Now feels lonely as hell
From this padded prison cell

So many times I said
Youd only be mine
I gave my blood and my tears
And loved you cyanide
When you took my lips
I took your breath
Sometimes loves better off dead

Youre all I need, make you only mine
I love you so I set you free
I had to take your life
Youre all I need, youre all I need
And I loved you but you didnt love me

Laid out cold
Now were both alone
But killing you helped me keep you home
I guess it was bad
Cause love can be sad
But we finally make the news

Tied up smiling
I thought you were happy
Never opened your eyes
I thought you were napping
I got so much to learn
About love in this world
But we finally made the news

Youre all I need, make you only mine
I loved you so, so I put you to sleep.[/FONT]
[FONT='Times New Roman', serif] [/FONT]
[FONT='Times New Roman', serif] [/FONT]
[FONT='Times New Roman', serif]Actually, he and I are friends now--if you can believe that. He's in a happy marriage and can't explain why he did what he did anymore than I can explain driving my crazy a$$ through a cornfield. Ahh, young love.[/FONT]

We have gone to an unlisted number before just to stop phone call harrassment - ours was Wednesdays and Saturdays, 6 calls each day, silence and a hang up. It was before the days of caller id and the only way to stop it then was to file a formal complaint with the police.

__________________If I did not tell you all the changes you might consider, I would be doing you a disservice, treating you with less than the full respect you deserve. This much I have learned from my years teaching and mentoring writers.